🤔 Let's Get WEIRD!

The Promised Land: Milk and honey, props and money …

In today’s Betting Life newsletter presented by Underdog:

• Next Gen Stats: Fastest ball carrier, air yards king …
• Unabated: Cross-sport and game props!
• NBA Best Bet: Knicks vs. Mavs.
• Bad Company: Can the Chiefs score 30 points?
• Novelty Props: Reba + Usher!
• It’s 2/8: Take it away, Matthew Freedman …

Later in the newsletter, Geoff Ulrich breaks down a few of the more “traditional” Super Bowl 58 novelty props: National Anthem, halftime show, etc.

Here, though, I want to get really weird by highlighting two bets that leverage the data from Next Gen Stats.

• Fastest Offensive Ball Carrier
• Player With Most Air Yards From a Single Reception

These are the types of bets available only for the Super Bowl.

What a time to be alive.

🏃‍♂️ Fastest Offensive Ball Carrier

I logged RB Christian McCaffrey at +790 (FanDuel) in our FREE Fantasy Life Bet Tracker to be the fastest ball carrier in the Super Bowl, but his odds have dropped to +590, which feels fair: McCaffrey led the 49ers five times in speed this year, clocking a high mark of 20.93 mph, and in his 18 games he was the fastest ball carrier thrice.

Even so, there are a few more players I think offer value in this market, so I’ve bet them all with a portfolio approach in mind.

• WR Deebo Samuel: +590 (FanDuel) | 0.5 units
• RB Isiah Pacheco: +680 (FanDuel) | 0.25 units
• QB Patrick Mahomes: +2000 (DraftKings) | 0.25 units

With 16 games this year (setting aside his brief appearance in the meaningless Week 18), Samuel has led the 49ers six times in speed and been the fastest overall ball carrier four times, hitting a high mark of 20.45 mph.

Either McCaffrey or Samuel is likely to be the fastest ball carrier for the 49ers, and that’s half the battle.

For the Chiefs, I like Pacheco most: In 17 appearances this year, he has led the Chiefs four times and the game three times as the fastest carrier with a high mark of 20.76 mph. Although he runs angry, Pacheco also runs fast.

And then there’s Mahomes, who has hit a top speed of 19.13 mph this year while leading the Chiefs three times as their fastest carrier. Wilder things have happened.

✈️ Player With Most Air Yards From a Single Reception

I’ve logged WR Marques Valdes-Scantling at +980 (FanDuel) in the tracker to have the most air yards from a single reception, and I still like him at +790, where he’s currently available.

In the AFC Championship, Valdes-Scantling had a season-high and team-high 96% route rate (per our Fantasy Life Utilization Tool). He might not see as much playing time in the Super Bowl, but he has a good chance to run the supermajority of routes with WRs Kadarius Toney, Mecole Hardman, and Skyy Moore (knee, IR) in the doghouse.

Valdes-Scantling is No. 1 on both teams with a 17.7-yard aDOT and No. 2 with 10.6 yards before catch per reception. With his downfield role, he could win this bet on the strength of just one target.

See More Super Bowl Props in Our Bet Tracker

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Jason Scavone from Unabated takes a high-level look at cross-sport and game props for the Super Bowl …

At this point in the Super Bowl timeline you can probably see the prop menu in your sleep. It’s like when you play too much Tetris and can see falling blocks every time you close your eyes, except with more Brock Purdy INT lines.

In last week’s Thursday Betting Life Newsletter, we gave you an overview of the different kinds of props available to bet during the Super Bowl, but if you missed it here’s the short version:

• Player Props: Will Patrick Mahomes be over or under 259.5 yards?
• Game Props: Will the game be decided by exactly three points?
• Index Props: Who will score the first TD?
• Cross-Sport Props: Which will be greater - Jayson Tatum points or 49ers points?
• Novelty Props: What’s the color of the Gatorade dumped on the winning coach?

We assume you know plenty about player props at this point. Novelty props are always fun for casual bettors, but we’d never recommend you invest much money in those.

But let’s take a closer look at a couple of ways to approach cross-sport and game props before you close the book on your Super Bowl bets.

🏀 Cross-Sport Props

Here’s one tip for cross-sport props that makes logical sense, but sometimes slips under people’s radar: Look for props that are Man vs. Team.

In our aforementioned Tatum prop, the Superbook in Las Vegas has him -2.5 against the 49ers, who have a team total of around 23.5. So to win this bet we can eyeball it and say we’d need Tatum to score somewhere north of 25.

And that’s possible. He’s done it in 23 of 46 games this year. But consider all the things that can happen to lose. Tatum could have a bad game. He could foul out. He could get hurt. 

The Niners, meanwhile, aren't going to lose all of their skill players. (What are the chances McCaffrey has to play emergency QB two years in a row?)

Individual player performance is fragile. Team performance is less so.

"This doesn’t mean you can automatically blindly bet the team to win all these matchups, but it gives you a good disposition to take when analyzing the matchup," Unabated’s Captain Jack Andrews said.

Check Out Rufus Peabody’s Prop Process Breakdown

🏀 Mavericks -3.5 at Knicks (-110, DraftKings)

The Mavericks have won back-to-back road games vs. the 76ers and Nets, which coincides with Kyrie Irving’s return to the lineup. The Mavs have been excellent with Irving and Luka Doncic sharing the court this season, so that’s not a huge shocker.

Meanwhile, the injuries continue to pile up for the Knicks. Jalen Brunson tweaked his ankle in their last game, while Julius Randle and OG Anunoby remain out. Overall, the Mavs have a significant edge from a health perspective.

🏀 Ring in the NBA trade deadline in style. Best bets for tonight’s NBA slate.

⬇️ What could go wrong with a Las Vegas Super Bowl? Pound the under…

🤝 Underdog & Super Bowl: Check out our free Pick’Em Tracker!

😜 Wasted in Phoenix. The PGA’s rowdiest event kicks off this week, making it a good time to shout out this legend.

✍️ Don’t close your sportsbook until you bet these props. A stab at Super Bowl MVP…

🏆 Swifties and “Scripties” unite? People seem sure Kelce is going to win this popular Super Bowl prop. 

🚨 Breaking news! ESPN, Fox, and Warner Brothers plan to make streaming more like cable…

💰 Super Bowl bets galore: They’re free, and we’re up +56.0 units for the season.

🔴 “But it is not this day”: Andy Reid not talking about retirement (right now). 

One of the best parts about the Super Bowl is that you can bet on a lot of things that happen outside of or alongside the game. And no Super Bowl betting card is truly complete without at least one degenerate bet on the Gatorade color, coin toss, or anthem length (among other ridiculous things we can bet on). With this in mind, here are a few of Geoff‘s favorite novelty props for Super Bowl 58. 

👩‍🎤 National Anthem Under 90.5 Seconds (-110, DraftKings)

• Play to: 89.5 (-120)

First off, while I get this is a novelty prop (and some books do limit action on these) I do want to state that I actually like this bet. Long story short, I spent a good hour on YouTube watching old clips of Reba McEntire singing the anthem. I found only one where she came even close to going over this time (the 1999 Cowboys Thanksgiving game). Even in this more drawn-out performance (she took almost 15 secs to finish “... land of the free, and the home of the brave”) she still came in at a hand-clocked (by me) 89.5 seconds. 

This year’s Super Bowl also has three songs before kickoff (Post Malone is singing “America the Beautiful” and Andra Day is singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing”). I cannot see McEntire — a staunch professional and country music Hall-of-Famer — dragging out her performance more than necessary in this spot. While she knows how to hit her high notes she’s not a show-off, and her past record indicates we’ll get a sharply sung version of the Star-Spangled Banner that comes in under — and potentially well under — this current number.

🎤 Halftime Show Over 8.5 Songs (-250, FanDuel)

• Play to: 9.5 (-135)

Let’s just get some context going before we go any further. Last year Rhianna (solo performer) sung at halftime and performed 12 (yes, 12!) different songs. We have to be careful here because to count as a “performed song” some sportsbooks may need at least 10 seconds of verse from said song. Still, that’s a low bar to clear. 

And when we dig deeper into Rhianna’s performance, we learn that she went through 39 different versions of her setlist. What that means, in layman’s terms, is that she was having a hard time deciding which songs to include and which to cut. No shock that she settled on the longer side with 12 songs. 

Next we get to Usher. I am no R&B expert, but Usher’s got a solid list of bangers he’ll want to break out here: “Yeah,” “OMG,” “Love in This Club,” “Confessions,” “DJ Got Us Fallin' In Love,” “My Boo,” “Caught Up,” and “You Make Me Wanna.”

At least seven of those eight seem like hard locks. 

Now look at the list of songs he has left to choose from: “My Way,” “U Got It Bad,” “U Don't Have to Call,” “Her Daddy (Daddy's Home)”. There is no way he is leaving out all these classics. This prop was actually on the board at -150 when I wrote it up first but has moved all the way down to -250.

I still think there is some value at this number given how low the bar we have to clear is (8.5) but line shopping (if possible) or waiting till kickoff to see if this total moves to 9.5 (with better odds) is a strategy to think about here as well.

🏹 Chiefs to Use First Coaches Challenge (-115, DraftKings)

• Play to: -120

This one is interesting. If you look at the record of these two coaches it becomes clear that while Andy Reid may not necessarily be the most challenge-happy coach in the league he’s not afraid to throw the flag. 

He’s had eight seasons where he’s thrown seven or more challenge flags — including one where he threw 14! Granted, he threw five this year but that number is still bigger than the miniscule three that Kyle Shanahan threw this season. Over his seven years of head coaching, Shanahan has thrown a challenge flag more than six times in a season only once (he had seven back in 2019). 

When it comes down to it, both men are expert playcallers, but Reid seems like he’s garnered a level of trust in the system while Shanahan remains defiant of it. 

That probably means there is an edge in betting the Chiefs in this spot on a novelty prop that could entail a full 4Q sweat or be over on the first play of the game.